Reclaiming a Legacy
Scenario: A cabal receives notification that one of their holdings, a tower in a small town of 5,000, has been magically locked from the inside and the owner, one of the cabal, has not emerged for a whole year. The cabal sent one of its junior members to investigate the tower and, if necessarily, reclaim it should the previous owner be found dead. His first stop was to the lord of the town to introduce himself and officially claim the tower (on confirmation that the former owner was dead). The lord doesn't care who wants to claim the tower but he wants his annual tithe from whoever owns it. The wizard assumed that the lord would need to appeased so he came with a chest of a dozen crystal lamps (a gift of light for the lord and a small demonstration of his cabal's power). The idea is that the wizard presented himself as a possible partner. The lord wanted a servant. The wizard explained that he needed to inspect the tower before he would decide whether he would claim it or not. The lord invited him back for dinner the next night to make a payment and his decision. The lord doesn't necessarily like wizards in his town but his father, foolishly, gave the cabal permission to construct a tower years ago. The wizard left and headed the tower - picking up two spies who followed him from the lord's hall. By the time the wizard got to the tower, it was early afternoon. The grounds around the tower had become home home to a young, teenaged hustler. He had grown up on the streets of the town doing whatever he needed to survive from day to day. The grounds around the tower were devoid of any real attention because people didn't want to get around the supposedly haunted structure. When the wizard arrived, the squatter was out for the day and the entrance was baracded. Upon examination, the wizard also found the obstruction was trapped with a glass bottle of some green liquid. Disturbing the blockage would make the bottle fall - releasing who-knows what. Carefully, the wizard disarmed the trap and moved the blockage enough to get inside but returned the bottle to its place. He knew that he was being followed and needed the baracade to stop or slow them down. He found the seal over the door to the tower still intact so it had not been breached. Unweaving the enchantment on the door took some time but he was able to remove them. Normally, he would have just temporarily suspended them so he could walk through the door. His cabal brother had woven the enchants so tightly that the only way to get through was to bring it all down. The door opened to a small hall that served as the tower's foyer. Chests were set against either wall with pegs above to hold the hats and cloaks of visitors. None hung ther now and the hall was dark. Down the hall, the foyer was connected to a larger room to receive guests without allowing them access to the rest of the tower without passing through a doorway. Passing through, he brushed away a curtain of cobwebs before climbing the steps to what could be considered a parlor. It was a small, inviting room with a hearth, several chairs and a small round table. By comparison to the dusty, dark and cobweb-strewn foyer, this chamber was spotless. A series of small, crystal lights hung throughout the room and bathed it in a bright, amber-colored light. Someone had cleverly placed panes of amber-colored glass in front of the lamps to soften and color of the Crystal Lamp. By the time the wizard reached the top of the tower he could find no reason to suggest anything to explain the disappearance of his cabal brother. All that he and the others knew was their follow member had stopped replying to any letters about a year and a half ago. Embroiled in their own affairs, the cabal didn't have anyone to send to investigate the matter until now. The one they sent was only a recent addition to their members - having only been named magus of the Third Order by the Order of the Stars not three months prior. The cabal feared that their aged brother had died and the condition of his tower or its contents was uncertain. When the youngest member of the cabal was climbing the stairs to the top of the tower he could feel the rising tingle of arcane energy. He paused at the top of the stairs to feel for enchants like one might touch a door to feel for heat in a house fire. The spark he felt caused him to flinch back in pain. The power within the enchantment was enormous. He was certain that the spell upon it was meant to kill any who attempted to open the door. Slowly, cautiously, he began to unweave the spell upon the door and then realized that there was another, hidden spell, within it. The second spell was much simpler - just an illusion of some kind. He worked around it until the fire spell had been unwoven and then looke dupon the illusion spell and read the words of it very slowly in his mind so as not to activate it. It was an image - a message of somekind. PUlling up a shield spell to protect himself, he read the words of the illusion aloud. An image formed in front of the door and spoke in a firm, clear voice. "My brothers, I am so terribly sorry. My arrogance and curiosity has killed us all." The wizard kept the shield that he had conjured in front of him and pushed the door open with the staff. The chamber within was absolute chaos. The whole of the tower up to this point had been pristine and orderly - no doube the effect of some enchanted means to keep it maintained. The chamber at hte top of the tower was a swirl of wind and papers - like a storm had blown through the windows but it, the storm, was inside the room. The swirl of papers was noted by the crackle of thunder and the occasional spark of mana like lightning. And hten the young wizard saw it, a rip in the air about four feet off of the ground within the summoning circle. The rip was a swirling ball of blood red light about the size of a mellon. A white mist like a cloud swirled counter to the ball that occasionally emitted a crack of mana-arcing to the nearby ring of Moon Silver set into the floor. The wizard stepped into the room and lifted his shield to protect his face from the swirling papers, quills, pen and other bits that had been puleld from the three desks which had surrounded the summoning circle. A strange squalk grabbed his attention and pulled it to the rafters of the room but he could see nothing. He slowly approached the circle to examine the apparant portal and saw another flash of light as mana arced from the swirling, blood red mass and struck the summoning circle again. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing, but the reaction was illogical. Mana, the energy of arcane magic, reacted negativly and violently with all ferous metals. It is for this reason why wizards do not wear armor or carry large weapons of iron or steel. It is also for this reason that their summoning circles were made out of metlas that wouldn't attract the energy in violent sparks. Copper and bronze were common as they were non-reactive but moon silver, one of the rarest of metals, actually worked -with- arcane magic rather than against it. Given this very simple principle of arcane energy, what the wizard was seeing shouldn't be happening. Mana doesn't react with moon silver so why is it...and then he froze. Upon examining the ball of energy and the flashes, he had all but ignored what he was doing. The summoning circle was about two fingers wide and had various runes etched into its surface to focus and contain the energy of spells. Wizards use them for all sort of reasons but primarily they are used for ritual magic; spells that took more thanone wizard to perform. When he was sent to the town, he asked what kind of research was being done at the tower. After a suffecient quantity of wine had been consumed, one of the masters said that the brother who controlled the tower was working on the "gift Gizad had denied the High Elves but they stole it from his library". The vague response had plagued the wizard the young wizard during his travel to the tower and now he realized what was being done; Portal magic. Portals - the abilit to connect one location to another through an arcane appateur was the perview of the gnomes of Gizad. They used them to teleport over vast distances but were limited to locations wher ethey had built their gates. Such massive structures took enormous amoutns of arcane energy and therefore had to be built upon the Pathways. These lines wer like invisible rivers of arcane energy that flowed across land and sea. The Gnomes could find them and knew how to tap into the paths to make their portals possible. The high elves, the Solonari,found a way to teleport to any location they wished - even to those locations that were no where near the Pathways. It defied all known laws of arcane magic but they were still able to colonize and explore regions beyond the reach of the Gnomes. The power of the High Elves was unmatched but they wanted more. Traveling to anyplace in their world wasn't enough so they eventually learned to direct their portals to new realms and made contact with new creatures. They summoned and bound elementals of earth, fire and water to do their bidding but their greed for power was eventually their undoing. Some doors, as the Gizadi say, should never be opened. Teh wizard watched as yet another spark of mana shot out from the ball of swirling light and struck the silvery circle - rmoving a tiny particle of metal. The repeated blasts had nearly cut th eband in two. There remained only a tiny sliver of metal left. The process must have taken months of repeated strikes to wear down and breach the metal. The wizard realized that something on the other side of the portal was trying to beak the seal and free itself. He had no knowledge of planar magic but he could repair the barrier if he timed his spells right. Opening his magical sight to examine the effects of the attack on the metal and accidentally glanced up to see the edge of the portal and was nearly blinded like a child who stares at a candle flame too long. the echo of the light hung in his eyes for a moment. Snapping his eyes closed, he looked away but for a moment he could see a face at the center of the portal. The face was alien to the wizard, possessing features unlike any dwarf, halfling, elf or gnome. They were feral, sharp features of some serpentine visage adorned with a crown of horns like an ox. Seconds passed before he opened his eyes and then he was cautious to look upon the edge of the metal circle on the floor. He timed the blasts from the portal at about ten minute intervals and staggered his spells in between them. Slowly his magica began to re-knit the metal back togehter like sewing the two sides of a garment into one. The process was slow but soon grew to the thickness of a quill's nib and then the thickness of a coin. What must have taken the creature in the portal months was repaired and it screamed in fury. The wind swirled around him and picked up speed. His long hair spilled out form his hood and whipped around his face like a tangle of tiny fingers trying to blind his eyes. From the corner of his left eye, he saw a large blur of something floating among the papers and debris and it was coming at his head. The blur twisted like a ribbon of silk or a scarf of fine cloth. The wizard was almost ready to ignore it until he saw the "ribbon" turn towards him and open a mouth of sharp, glass-like fangs. The flat worms's mouth opened to three times its own width and was headed straight for his face. The wizard picked up his staff from the ground next to him and ws going to swing at hte creature when he noticed that another one had emerged from a stack of books and was close to his hand. He recoiled just in time to miss the creature's strike and rolled away to avoid the one floatin gin the fierce cyclone. What he thought was two creautures had been revealed to be a swarm of a dozen once he came out of his roll. They were floating in the gale and crawling on the ground to put themselves between the wizard and the portal. The wizard pulled up his shield and once more it stretched it to cover him into a true hemisphere. The ribbon creatures smacked into it and flattened out across its surface. He stood up and sent a blast of kinetic force out to push the swarm away from the portal. The spell barely phased their formation but it was enough of a break in their attack to pull his staff to his hand with a quick of his magic. With his staff, he began firing bolts of ice at the creatures.l Even if the energy blast only grased them, the ice would slow them down and the added weight eventually took them to the floor. The cretures wriggled their way towards the wizard's boots as he stabbed at them with the butt of his staff. The metal point that capped the end did not impale them like a spear but it was able to crunch whatever ws inside their heads. While he faught off the ribbon worms, the face inside the portal sent out another blast though this one was much more potent. The wizard would not have much time to contain the portal if the portal entity could hammer away like that a few more times. To deal with the ribbon creatures, he conjured an owl-like construct of arcane energy that looked and generally acted like the beast whose shape it resembled. The construct could fly around the room and attack the ribbons that remained in the air as well as pounce upon those on the ground. This gave him time enough to figure out what was happening within the ritual. Normally, such a magical ceremony would not have lasted this long unless its construction was directly tied into the flow of arcane energy that the tower was tapping into. Category:Fiction Category:Fiction/South Marches